The 32-inch rectangular TV in Amravati-based archery coach Praful Dange’s house could have passed for a circular target board on Wednesday as around 13 pairs of eyes fixated on it between 12.30 pm and 1.30 pm.
The wordless attention of his archery students towards the progress of Dange’s former student, Satara’s Pravin Jadhav, at the individual men’s recurve archery rounds in the Tokyo Olympics was interrupted only by connectivity issues when their gaze darted from the TV to the three mobile phones in the room that were streaming the match simultaneously.
Cheers that had shot up in the room like arrows during the first round when 25-year-old Jadhav knocked out World Number 2 Galsan Bazarzhapov from Russian Olympic Committee in straight sets became deflated verbal darts in the second round when Jadhav went down to United States’ World Number 1 Brady Ellison without a fight. Ellison wasn’t at his finest, but Jadhav’s misses tilted the eliminations round in favour of the American who won with an easy 6-0.
As one of many coaches who shaped Jadhav’s journey from undernourished child sprinter to Maharashtra’s first Olympian archer, Dange couldn’t help but blame himself, too, for the poor show.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened,” said Dange, who could not recognise his studious, calm ex-pupil in the archer on screen who seemed to flounder momentarily before firing arrows in the match against Ellison. The difficult weather conditions in the range would be a flimsy excuse, felt the coach. “Yes, it was windy, but then both the players are subject to the same conditions. We fell short in our preparation,” said an apologetic Dange, who recalled Jadhav’s confident tone during their video call earlier that day. “He said he would play with all his heart.”
Besides this assurance, what had filled Dange with hope that Jadhav could beat the American was the memory of an earlier contest from the pre-Covid times between Ellison and Jadhav that had ended in a tie-breaker. Though Jadhav had lost that match, “Ellison was in awe,” recalled Dange.
Back in Phaltan taluka in Jadhav's hometown Satara, Vikas Bhujbal—the sports teacher who had prescribed athletics to 10-year-old Jadhav as an escape from his destiny as a wage labourer and who had seen the Tokyo-bound Jadhav off at Pune’s international airport--was sorting gunny sacks of rice meant for mid-day meals even as his prodigy’s match was on. “I can never get myself to watch any of his games. I’m a sports teacher but my heart is not that strong,” said a heartbroken Bhujbal, who couldn’t recover from the fact that Jadhav lost the first set to Ellison 27-28, “by just one point”. “Luck wasn’t on his side,” said Bhujbal.
Dange, on his part, turned off the TV only after reading both respect and relief in the expression that ensued on the World Number One archer Ellison’s face after his win on Wednesday. “It was the expression of someone who had dismissed a tough competitor.”
